waltzing matilda

So my daughter has this song on one of her children's CDs, and for some reason it makes me think of Australia:

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a Coolabah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
"Who'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me?"
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda!
Who'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me?
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
"Who'll come waltzing Matilda with me?"

Down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong,
Up jumped the swag man and grabbed him with glee.
And he sang as he watched and waitied til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me."

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda!
You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me.
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
"You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me."

Up rode the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came troopers! one, two, three!
"Now where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?
You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me."

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda!
You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me.
"Now where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?
You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me."

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong.
"You'll never catch me alive," said he.
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong,
"You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me."

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda!
You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me.
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong,
"You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me."

Okay, after checking the dictionary thoroughly, I think I'm getting the hang of it:
swagman: an itinerant worker, like an "okie" here in the States
tuckerbag: where he keeps his food
jumbuck: a sheep
billabong: a (mostly) dried-up river
billy: tea kettle

So if I'm reading this aright, it's a folk song about an itinerant worker who was killed while "resisting arrest" for stealing a sheep. In essence, a form of protest over the gentility -- the "squatter" who claims to own public land -- and police brutality. (Three troopers to arrest one man?)

If I understand correctly, the squatter usually was an absent landlord, someone who might never have seen the land or sheep in question. While that doesn't undercut the legality of the ownership, it does make the contempt for the landowners more understandable, much like the laborers in California resented the corporate farm owners they had to deal with, like in "The Grapes of Wrath."

It gets even more interesting. (See, I obsess over stuff I find really interesting.) According to the author of www.waltzingmatilda.com, I'm not too far off in my guesswork.

He links the song to an eight-day period in 1894, when the landowners were trying to reduce by 12½ percent the amount of money sheep-shearers were paid. The sheep-shearers unionized, a couple of them were shot as insurrectionists, they burned down a few things, and things got pretty hairy. The writer, who claims to have done about 10 years of research into this, even identifies the swagman he thinks the song is about -- and yes, the incident the song describes apparently is even historical.

The web site author believes the events of that eight-day strike broke the back of a nascent class system in Australia and led to a society where people could move about based on ability rather than social class, which is why the song is such a fundamentally Australian folk song.

And if you think THIS is unpleasant, you should hear about "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" and "Ring Around the Rosie," and what they're about.